Directions: In your group, find 10 Web 2.0 tools that are relevant for today's teachers. Create a product using each of the tools, embed your sample, then write a 500 word review of the tool including overall impression, ease of use, relevant application, grade level recommendation, and any tips or pointers.
1. Chacha
Unfortunately on Chacha you cannot create your own thing but I do know a lot about Chacha and I even worked for Chacha for a good amount of time last year. Chacha works by if you do not know the answer to something, you can simply send a text asking the question to Chacha (242242) and they will send back an answer as fast as possible. The way they find out the answers are many ways. The first way is by having multiple answers that have been used before, and they can send one of those back to you. They have a section where if you need to know weather, or the sports score, or when a movie is and they can just click in where you are and send back the answer. If they do not know the answer they is a position called a researcher where they have to Google and find the correct answer and they will send it back to the responder and the responder will send it out. They have to verify the source and everything as well. It’s a very good resource to anyone at any time. Sometimes you will find workers though who will just send back an answer used before and it is an incorrect answer, that is the only downfall I saw about it. It is very easy to use as I said all you do is text your question to them. I have used it for homework, or if I don’t know a random fact, or I have done it just for fun and talked to the responder before. Obviously age level would have to be around someone who has a cell phone, but I wouldn’t want like 12 year olds or 13 year olds really using this. Sometimes the answers can I have vulgar answers coming back. They have answers for almost everything, if you think they don’t have the answer for your question, think wrong. They get millions of questions a day, and have tons of workers. When you are working for them you constantly get questions coming in and you see the type of questions and some are very funny, some are serious, and some you would never think of. So I recommend highly of using this as an everyday source unless you have a smart phone and are able to use Google. If not this source is very good, the company takes their work extremely serious and are always looking to get more people working so they can be more adequate and efficient on their answers. They monitor their workers and what they send out, the speed they send out and even the grammar of their text. They want to look very good. So all in all, I would recommend Chacha to my older students if they were ever wondering of something or needed help on homework, but should never use it to cheat on a test or in any immoral way.
2. Animoto
Animoto is probably my favorite web tool that I have used this year. I even got the app on my Iphone to play with. Animoto is a slideshow maker where all you have to do is upload your photos, any words you want in the slide and you set the order of it. You can pick a song from their library or use a song of your own as the background. What Animoto does is it makes the transitions for the pictures with the music and makes a great slideshow so fast. I made one real quick of my volleyball career and one about physical education. I was talking to one of my mom’s friends from our karate school and we were talking about what apps we have and I showed her the Animoto app because she has three kids, and I thought she would like it a lot and could find good ways to using it, and she loved it and downloaded it. The overall impression of this resource is astounding. The quality of the videos and the professionalism of it is glorious. It is crazy how easy it is to use like I said before. You upload the photos, and they have little icons of each picture and you can just click and drag to what order you want them to do. To put words all you do is click text, and you are limited to how much you can write but then it becomes an icon and you can move it around too to when you want it in the video. Above is my video of volleyball which I made in probably no more than 10 minutes and I loved how it turned out. It is good to show a slide show of a family trip or to show pictures of history or a culture. You can even put relevant music to it and make it so professional. Grade level recommendation could honestly be almost any grade. The only problem with that is with the younger children may need help uploading photos and their choice of music but other than that they can take their pictures or choose their music, and set the order, and put in any text they may want and do it the way they want and present to whoever and can even publish it on the Animoto website for others to see or you can make it private to just your family to see. Some tips and pointers are for using it is to organize your photos ahead of time for quick uploading to the site and having your song in the right format. I would also advise putting text and many photos to make it longer, just like 8 photos will not make it very long at all. Honestly I love this site and will probably use it many many times and I am still astounded to how well it works and how easy it is.
3. Khan Academy
Khan Academy may be the coolest way to learn and practice what you have been learning since the beginning of everything. I wish this was around when I was in high school and I can actually still use it today in college, but unfortunately I am very lazy and a procrastinator. I do like playing all the math games though for fun. So basically Khan Academy is an online teaching source where it began as one many doing lessons through Youtube for I believe his niece, and it became a hit by how he did it and it grew and grew into a huge organization, covering almost every topic at your hands whenever you want it. The amount that they cover and what you can learn there is unbelievable. It covers more than college or Universities. Not only does it have videos teaching you the information it has practice tools, where it just gives you the problem and you have to find the answer and it will even explain why your answer is incorrect or correct right there. With answering questions correctly you will earn points that will unlock the next level of questions, that way you can’t just skip a section so you are getting every piece of knowledge on that section to be successful. The overall impression is great, it is a live organization with several people teaching different lessons and it is a non-profit organization. It is all about helping out the students learn. The website is very professional looking and very easy to manage your way around the site. You can create your own account to log what you have been watching, and the practice tools you have been doing. This site is extremely to use. They have every subject you would ever want to learn and all you have to do is click that link and watch the videos. You can pause it whenever you want or rewind it if you need to. It is all at your own pace. Once you get it down you can start doing the practice problems and putting it to use. This site is relevant to any type of learning through an educational subject, so it is relevant to absolutely any student of any age. I recommend this to absolutely any grade level. It has the basics of simple math to advanced calculus, or British Literature, or even chemistry. A toddler may need help accessing the website and may need supervision so they don’t stray away to other sites, but any age can find a great benefit out of this site. My tips towards this site would be to start off at the basics and try not to jump straight into the advanced sections. Get some practice in the easy sections, so you don’t have a problem later in the problem just because you jumped a section. It’s a great site and I recommend it to everyone to use.
4. YouTube
YouTube: Youtube can be used for teachers in so many ways. Teachers can use youtube for videos and tutorials on activities and information about subjects that need to be taught. Youtube can be inspirational for teachers and students. Teachers all across the country are finding that judiciously chosen videos help students engage more deeply with the subject matter, and recall the information they've learned longer. A lot of students these days expect information to be presented in a flashy, entertaining way, so videos can help draw them in. In late 2011, YouTube for Schools was introduced, an opt-in program that allows schools to access thousands of educational videos from vetted YouTube channels like Pbs, Ted, and Khan Academy in a safe and controlled environment; the teachers choose what videos are available to their students. When choosing clips for the classroom, keep them short, this gives you time to discuss what you've just shown and its significance to the larger lesson. Once you've identified a video, there are several ways to bring it to the classroom. For PE teachers like me and Dylan, using youtube can be so beneficial. We can bring videos of different sports and fun games that we can play in the classroom, also different types of tutorials for doing things like pushups and sit ups in the correct position and technique. Once children and students see how things are working in the correct format, or position for them can understand the concepts so much better. Most students today, are hands on learners, and visual learners. Once they see other people do it they can have the chance to do it themselves and understand how it works better. Research says that youtube has matured into one of the biggest resources for educational content ever. Teachers can find videos that make the subject of your lesson more applicable to students’ everyday lives. As a teacher browse youtube, and you will find tons of fun things and lots of potentially beneficial classroom video clips, as well as the usual eye-opening experience when dealing with the world's population and the things people want to share. Using and showing YouTube clips, then having your own classroom discussion about the clips, is an incredibly robust classroom approach. Working with students to create and upload their own videos is an even more powerful application.
5. SlideRocket
In today's digital classroom, it is important for teachers to engage students on "their playing field." Interactive programs like Slide Rocket make producing entertaining and educational videos easy. Slide Rocket has a gigantic library of free pictures, and its easy-to-use plug-ins make adding a YouTube video directly into the presentation child's play for even non-tech savvy teachers. Slide Rocket allows users to publish either publicly or privately, so teachers can decide when and where to show their presentations. Some benefits of using slide rocket are that it is a web-based application; it can easily share presentations by publishing a URL. Your information can be confidential, but can also be easily access if needed or wanted. Slide rocket allows students or teachers to put pictures or videos in easily. It has great effects and fun transitions. Allows graphs and information to be published, and most importantly it is free! Slide rocket can be used as a fun new activity for students. Sometimes students need to learn to use other programs than power point to present certain information. Power point is a great tool, but giving students the chance to be different and to use variety. This can help kids establish confidence when using different types of technology and it is such a fun way to express themselves. When I did my slide rocket, I wanted to show the importance of cyber bullying and bullying in general. When children see the slide rocket it gives them the opportunity to look at pictures and to see a video. When teachers use slide rocket they can come up with so many different activities and assignment for the students to do, and they can grade them accordingly by the work that they present. Slide Rocket is effective for use in education because it allows students to work together from multiple computers on the same project at the same time. This product could be used in an elementary setting where students are being taught a lesson through presenting the lesson to be more appealing and interesting to the students. This application could still be used to create presentations and teach students information they would learn in a class room setting. This application will just keep their attention longer so they do not lose focus easily and it can also allow for more interaction among the students. This product could be used to communicate with other students from around the world, present projects in the class room, teach how to create more appealing applications in a presentation. Slide Rocket allows one to have a free account which offers limited access to the site and slide rocket shows the progress that students have made in real-time.
6. WikiSpace Wikispace for Molly
Some of the best ways to use a wiki in a classroom are these:
Team collaboration: Instead of using the old pencil and paper method of assignments most teachers now are making a classroom wiki site and assigning students into groups. This allows them to learn how to use the internet and work as a team. They all log and do the assignment together. Working in a team requires a lot of communication and use of working together to get the assignment done. Once it is complete the groups can present their project in front of the class, each talking about what they accomplished and learned. This helps with teamwork, the environment, and teaching fun ways to learn about technology, and can be done in and classroom setting.
Setting up a classroom wiki: Instead of an agenda that we all had to carry around in middle school and high school, teachers should make a class wiki and have students look there every night to figure out their homework and activity and projects that need to be completed. This can allow student to communicate through the wiki and email, allowing them to spend more time using technology and less time working on pencil and paper.
At the end of the year or semester teachers can assign student the opportunity to make their own wiki. This can be useful to students for their future and allowing them to illustrate themselves in a different manor. The can post stories, or images, or videos, anything they want as long as it is appropriate. This can be presented in front of the classroom.
Wiki is a virtual content management platform where anyone accessing the content can upload, modify and exchange documents and files. The optimal benefit of using a wiki for classroom education is the ability to facilitate and document collaboration among class members. Wikis can be used as an effective collaboration tool, but as with any new technology, the benefits need to be weighed against the potential problems that may present in the educational environment. To that end, I have identified several pros and cons in my work with wiki spaces in the classroom, and include suggestions about avoiding common pitfalls. Wikis are an innovation that can easily be adapted to the classroom environment, offering a wealth of options for community collaborative processes. As with all technology we can expect that wikis may someday be replaced by other ways to virtually share information across the street or across the globe. My own experience with wiki space is great! I love my wiki space, and it is a professional piece that I will use in interviews and other career opportunities!
7. ToonDoo ToonDoo For Molly
Toon Doo is a free openapplication that allows anyone to create a comic strip. All it takes to sign up is a username and password. Easy enough! And no spam e-mails! I feel ToonDoo can be used in any classroom at any level and it is easy for students and teachers to create. Plus, it will give you something that you can print out and post on your bulletin board for back to school night or simply for your Administrators to see! One of the things I like about ToonDoo, besides its simplicity, is that it is more than just a comic creation site. You can alter photographs, create your own crop of characters, re-edit your comic (or a friend’s comic), and think about art and writing together in new ways. ToonDoo is not the only site doing this, of course, so you may want to explore around a bit. My complaint with ToonDoo has always been that I did not want kids to be able to search around the public forums for adult comics (not that I ever found anything inappropriate, but still …) and this walled-off community for just the classroom seems like a good answer. Toondoo offers a convenient platform for creating and sharing cartoons. To get started, you simply choose a single, double, or triple panel. You can import images, but Toondoo offers a wide range of characters, text bubbles, backgrounds, etc. These couldn’t be easier to select and apply. An important aspect of ToonDoo is its capacity as an attention-grabber. Teachers or educators can use a short but vibrant cartoon to capture the attention and interest of the class. Educators and teachers can use cartoons by ToonDoo within a lesson to demonstrate a point of interest within the lesson while making the point flow more naturally. My own experience with toondoo was difficult at first. It was the first assignment that my teacher in my technology class assigned and I was nervous, but once I got started it turned out to be really easy and fun! I reminded me of something that I would have in mind to do with elementary or middle school kids. I do not think that high school kids would enjoy using toondoo as much as the younger children. ToonDoo can give students the opportunity to express themselves and their favorite activities or characters in new ways that are unknown to the rest of the classroom, and the idea or actually printing those out and displaying them is such a great idea! Displaying your students work can be so beneficial to their confidence and the accuracy that they put into their work will be better after knowing that it will be displayed for anyone and everyone to see!
8. Poll Everywhere
When using poll everywhere you can ask a question and allow people to respond using multiple choice or free write answers. Each person has total control of their own poll. Once they decide to start the poll it will start, and once they decide to end the poll it will end. While many schools and classrooms are fortunate enough to have the funds to purchase sets of classroom clickers, poll everywhere offers educators an viable alternative to traditional classroom response systems, by taking advantage of the cell phones that students are already brining into our classrooms. One big concern is schools cell phone policy. Each teacher will have to come up with their own cell phone policy and make the students obey the rules. If students do not have a cell phone or texting plan than place them into groups. Place students into pairs or small groups that require a debate or consensus before the vote can be placed. Be in charge of your poll! When creating a new poll, there is an option in the top right hand corner that allows the poll creator to decide how many times a single device can place a vote. For quick and easy learning and progress, try to create multiple questions with specific answers, try creating a few polls with generic responses
- A,B,C,D
-Yes, No
-True, False
This strategy will allow you to quickly poll a class based on an existing quiz, test or homework assignment. Also, by using this strategy, you can simply keep one poll projected and clear the results for the next question. This eliminates the need to go back into your poll inbox to select the next poll.
I think that poll everywhere is a great classroom tool. This can be a great way to give quizzes or test, and it is so much quicker that doing a regular written test, and can give students the opportunity to find their grade out right away. This web tool would be great for me as a physical educator to use because I ask great questions about muscles, and games, and workouts, and bones that we learn in my class. One use I really like is having students give responses to questions or ask their own questions about reading assignments or the like OUTSIDE of class. Every teacher has been there when you’ve given an assignment and on the following day ask, “Do you have any questions?” and you only get blank stares or one word responses. This way students respond while they are reading, it has helped to get more thoughtful responses and more meaningful questions. Again if your using poll everywhere in your classroom the only downfall is allowing your students to use their cell phones. Make sure that all students stay focused and follow the rules of the poll. This web tool is probably more beneficial for middle school and high school students, who have cell phones, or ipods, or ipads, and know how to work them.
9. Podomatic
Podomatic is a great tool for any teacher to use with their students, or have their students use for projects or homework. Podomatic is a tool where you can create an audio segment talking about whatever you want, hopefully educational, and it can be as long as you want I believe. So teachers can use this site to talk about a specific subject like math or about a caterpillar and have their students listen to it at home and take notes, or fill out a worksheet along with the audio segment. It is a great tool to use with your students out of class, and you can even make announcements for your students to check up daily or even give some information as to what class will be like tomorrow so they can prepare. Teachers can also have the students create a Podomatic and have them reenact a radio show, a news announcement or beginning announcements of school. They can have the students try to teach about something particular in a Podomatic as well. They can listen to it over and over again to help them study or show their friends what they have done. You can publish it on the website and have other people listen to your audio segment or even have them use it for their classroom or to help their kids learn. It is a fabulous resource for an educational value. The overall impression of this website is very professional and is very easy to use. You have to create your own account, but it has a memory base to how much you can keep in there. It will keep your past audio segments there for you ready to use or share at any time. The website is very easy to manage, and you can create one in no time, but I do suggest that you plan what you say out by righting it down and going over it a few times. Stumbling your words doesn’t always sound so good, you want to make it sound professional and smooth. I suggest the grade level for this tool to be around third grade and above. I say this because between kindergarten and second grade they still have trouble over the concept of what it is all about, and with third graders they can work with media pretty well. Also third graders can get their parents to get on the website for them to check up on class, and any grade older can do the same all the way through college. Any tips or pointers for this site from me is to plan ahead for sure, and maybe have some practice runs or do it a couple of times and see which one sounds the best. You can always delete the mess ups or mistakes and only have the good one be seen. This is a great site for once again anyone to use about.
Prezi is a tool I learned about my freshman year in my Intro to College Writing class, and I honestly thought it was so cool. I like to describe it as Power point with all the bells and whistles. It doesn’t just go from a slide to a slide to slide. It moves around, it zooms in and out, it goes sideways, and it just intrigues the viewer, because you don’t know what is going to happen next. While all that is happening you are learning the information written down, or the pictures being shown. The overall impression of the site is that it is pretty cool, it is not as professional and boring as what a business meeting may have but it has all the Pazazz that will keep kids interested. Unfortunately the ease of use is actually a little hard at first. It took me a while to figure out how to do everything. I still do not know how to do everything, but I can make it look really good still and exciting. You may have to go through the tutorial to learn everything, and may have to give a tutorial to your students of younger ages so they don’t get confused and frustrated with it. I would say this site is great for teachers to make for their students to use to teach and learn, but I think it is a great way to have the students get involved and have a project and make one. When I was younger I thought making a power point project was the coolest thing ever. I believe third grade and up is a great grade recommendation for this. Obviously the younger they are the more help they will need, and the older they are the more independent they will be with it and will be able to explore a majority of it on their own and give them the opportunity to be creative with it. Any tips or pointers I have of this site is to not get frustrated and give up so easily with it. It can be a little tough to understand and work but once you get it down it is so cool what you can do with it. Probably should practice a bunch and just make random prezi slides with no meaning to get the handle of what you can do with it so when you need to do a project you know how to do everything and will not get so frustrated with it. I love Prezi so much more than power point and is a good alternate to the slide rocket when you want to make it more fun.
Directions: In your group, find 10 Web 2.0 tools that are relevant for today's teachers. Create a product using each of the tools, embed your sample, then write a 500 word review of the tool including overall impression, ease of use, relevant application, grade level recommendation, and any tips or pointers.
1. Chacha
Unfortunately on Chacha you cannot create your own thing but I do know a lot about Chacha and I even worked for Chacha for a good amount of time last year. Chacha works by if you do not know the answer to something, you can simply send a text asking the question to Chacha (242242) and they will send back an answer as fast as possible. The way they find out the answers are many ways. The first way is by having multiple answers that have been used before, and they can send one of those back to you. They have a section where if you need to know weather, or the sports score, or when a movie is and they can just click in where you are and send back the answer. If they do not know the answer they is a position called a researcher where they have to Google and find the correct answer and they will send it back to the responder and the responder will send it out. They have to verify the source and everything as well. It’s a very good resource to anyone at any time. Sometimes you will find workers though who will just send back an answer used before and it is an incorrect answer, that is the only downfall I saw about it. It is very easy to use as I said all you do is text your question to them. I have used it for homework, or if I don’t know a random fact, or I have done it just for fun and talked to the responder before. Obviously age level would have to be around someone who has a cell phone, but I wouldn’t want like 12 year olds or 13 year olds really using this. Sometimes the answers can I have vulgar answers coming back. They have answers for almost everything, if you think they don’t have the answer for your question, think wrong. They get millions of questions a day, and have tons of workers. When you are working for them you constantly get questions coming in and you see the type of questions and some are very funny, some are serious, and some you would never think of. So I recommend highly of using this as an everyday source unless you have a smart phone and are able to use Google. If not this source is very good, the company takes their work extremely serious and are always looking to get more people working so they can be more adequate and efficient on their answers. They monitor their workers and what they send out, the speed they send out and even the grammar of their text. They want to look very good. So all in all, I would recommend Chacha to my older students if they were ever wondering of something or needed help on homework, but should never use it to cheat on a test or in any immoral way.
2. Animoto
Animoto is probably my favorite web tool that I have used this year. I even got the app on my Iphone to play with. Animoto is a slideshow maker where all you have to do is upload your photos, any words you want in the slide and you set the order of it. You can pick a song from their library or use a song of your own as the background. What Animoto does is it makes the transitions for the pictures with the music and makes a great slideshow so fast. I made one real quick of my volleyball career and one about physical education. I was talking to one of my mom’s friends from our karate school and we were talking about what apps we have and I showed her the Animoto app because she has three kids, and I thought she would like it a lot and could find good ways to using it, and she loved it and downloaded it. The overall impression of this resource is astounding. The quality of the videos and the professionalism of it is glorious. It is crazy how easy it is to use like I said before. You upload the photos, and they have little icons of each picture and you can just click and drag to what order you want them to do. To put words all you do is click text, and you are limited to how much you can write but then it becomes an icon and you can move it around too to when you want it in the video. Above is my video of volleyball which I made in probably no more than 10 minutes and I loved how it turned out. It is good to show a slide show of a family trip or to show pictures of history or a culture. You can even put relevant music to it and make it so professional. Grade level recommendation could honestly be almost any grade. The only problem with that is with the younger children may need help uploading photos and their choice of music but other than that they can take their pictures or choose their music, and set the order, and put in any text they may want and do it the way they want and present to whoever and can even publish it on the Animoto website for others to see or you can make it private to just your family to see. Some tips and pointers are for using it is to organize your photos ahead of time for quick uploading to the site and having your song in the right format. I would also advise putting text and many photos to make it longer, just like 8 photos will not make it very long at all. Honestly I love this site and will probably use it many many times and I am still astounded to how well it works and how easy it is.
3. Khan Academy
Khan Academy may be the coolest way to learn and practice what you have been learning since the beginning of everything. I wish this was around when I was in high school and I can actually still use it today in college, but unfortunately I am very lazy and a procrastinator. I do like playing all the math games though for fun. So basically Khan Academy is an online teaching source where it began as one many doing lessons through Youtube for I believe his niece, and it became a hit by how he did it and it grew and grew into a huge organization, covering almost every topic at your hands whenever you want it. The amount that they cover and what you can learn there is unbelievable. It covers more than college or Universities. Not only does it have videos teaching you the information it has practice tools, where it just gives you the problem and you have to find the answer and it will even explain why your answer is incorrect or correct right there. With answering questions correctly you will earn points that will unlock the next level of questions, that way you can’t just skip a section so you are getting every piece of knowledge on that section to be successful. The overall impression is great, it is a live organization with several people teaching different lessons and it is a non-profit organization. It is all about helping out the students learn. The website is very professional looking and very easy to manage your way around the site. You can create your own account to log what you have been watching, and the practice tools you have been doing. This site is extremely to use. They have every subject you would ever want to learn and all you have to do is click that link and watch the videos. You can pause it whenever you want or rewind it if you need to. It is all at your own pace. Once you get it down you can start doing the practice problems and putting it to use. This site is relevant to any type of learning through an educational subject, so it is relevant to absolutely any student of any age. I recommend this to absolutely any grade level. It has the basics of simple math to advanced calculus, or British Literature, or even chemistry. A toddler may need help accessing the website and may need supervision so they don’t stray away to other sites, but any age can find a great benefit out of this site. My tips towards this site would be to start off at the basics and try not to jump straight into the advanced sections. Get some practice in the easy sections, so you don’t have a problem later in the problem just because you jumped a section. It’s a great site and I recommend it to everyone to use.
4. YouTube
YouTube: Youtube can be used for teachers in so many ways. Teachers can use youtube for videos and tutorials on activities and information about subjects that need to be taught. Youtube can be inspirational for teachers and students. Teachers all across the country are finding that judiciously chosen videos help students engage more deeply with the subject matter, and recall the information they've learned longer. A lot of students these days expect information to be presented in a flashy, entertaining way, so videos can help draw them in. In late 2011, YouTube for Schools was introduced, an opt-in program that allows schools to access thousands of educational videos from vetted YouTube channels like Pbs, Ted, and Khan Academy in a safe and controlled environment; the teachers choose what videos are available to their students. When choosing clips for the classroom, keep them short, this gives you time to discuss what you've just shown and its significance to the larger lesson. Once you've identified a video, there are several ways to bring it to the classroom. For PE teachers like me and Dylan, using youtube can be so beneficial. We can bring videos of different sports and fun games that we can play in the classroom, also different types of tutorials for doing things like pushups and sit ups in the correct position and technique. Once children and students see how things are working in the correct format, or position for them can understand the concepts so much better. Most students today, are hands on learners, and visual learners. Once they see other people do it they can have the chance to do it themselves and understand how it works better. Research says that youtube has matured into one of the biggest resources for educational content ever. Teachers can find videos that make the subject of your lesson more applicable to students’ everyday lives. As a teacher browse youtube, and you will find tons of fun things and lots of potentially beneficial classroom video clips, as well as the usual eye-opening experience when dealing with the world's population and the things people want to share. Using and showing YouTube clips, then having your own classroom discussion about the clips, is an incredibly robust classroom approach. Working with students to create and upload their own videos is an even more powerful application.
5. SlideRocket
In today's digital classroom, it is important for teachers to engage students on "their playing field." Interactive programs like Slide Rocket make producing entertaining and educational videos easy. Slide Rocket has a gigantic library of free pictures, and its easy-to-use plug-ins make adding a YouTube video directly into the presentation child's play for even non-tech savvy teachers. Slide Rocket allows users to publish either publicly or privately, so teachers can decide when and where to show their presentations. Some benefits of using slide rocket are that it is a web-based application; it can easily share presentations by publishing a URL. Your information can be confidential, but can also be easily access if needed or wanted. Slide rocket allows students or teachers to put pictures or videos in easily. It has great effects and fun transitions. Allows graphs and information to be published, and most importantly it is free! Slide rocket can be used as a fun new activity for students. Sometimes students need to learn to use other programs than power point to present certain information. Power point is a great tool, but giving students the chance to be different and to use variety. This can help kids establish confidence when using different types of technology and it is such a fun way to express themselves. When I did my slide rocket, I wanted to show the importance of cyber bullying and bullying in general. When children see the slide rocket it gives them the opportunity to look at pictures and to see a video. When teachers use slide rocket they can come up with so many different activities and assignment for the students to do, and they can grade them accordingly by the work that they present. Slide Rocket is effective for use in education because it allows students to work together from multiple computers on the same project at the same time. This product could be used in an elementary setting where students are being taught a lesson through presenting the lesson to be more appealing and interesting to the students. This application could still be used to create presentations and teach students information they would learn in a class room setting. This application will just keep their attention longer so they do not lose focus easily and it can also allow for more interaction among the students. This product could be used to communicate with other students from around the world, present projects in the class room, teach how to create more appealing applications in a presentation. Slide Rocket allows one to have a free account which offers limited access to the site and slide rocket shows the progress that students have made in real-time.
6. WikiSpace
Wikispace for Molly
Some of the best ways to use a wiki in a classroom are these:
Wiki is a virtual content management platform where anyone accessing the content can upload, modify and exchange documents and files. The optimal benefit of using a wiki for classroom education is the ability to facilitate and document collaboration among class members. Wikis can be used as an effective collaboration tool, but as with any new technology, the benefits need to be weighed against the potential problems that may present in the educational environment. To that end, I have identified several pros and cons in my work with wiki spaces in the classroom, and include suggestions about avoiding common pitfalls. Wikis are an innovation that can easily be adapted to the classroom environment, offering a wealth of options for community collaborative processes. As with all technology we can expect that wikis may someday be replaced by other ways to virtually share information across the street or across the globe. My own experience with wiki space is great! I love my wiki space, and it is a professional piece that I will use in interviews and other career opportunities!
7. ToonDoo
ToonDoo For Molly
Toon Doo is a free openapplication that allows anyone to create a comic strip. All it takes to sign up is a username and password. Easy enough! And no spam e-mails! I feel ToonDoo can be used in any classroom at any level and it is easy for students and teachers to create. Plus, it will give you something that you can print out and post on your bulletin board for back to school night or simply for your Administrators to see! One of the things I like about ToonDoo, besides its simplicity, is that it is more than just a comic creation site. You can alter photographs, create your own crop of characters, re-edit your comic (or a friend’s comic), and think about art and writing together in new ways. ToonDoo is not the only site doing this, of course, so you may want to explore around a bit. My complaint with ToonDoo has always been that I did not want kids to be able to search around the public forums for adult comics (not that I ever found anything inappropriate, but still …) and this walled-off community for just the classroom seems like a good answer. Toondoo offers a convenient platform for creating and sharing cartoons. To get started, you simply choose a single, double, or triple panel. You can import images, but Toondoo offers a wide range of characters, text bubbles, backgrounds, etc. These couldn’t be easier to select and apply. An important aspect of ToonDoo is its capacity as an attention-grabber. Teachers or educators can use a short but vibrant cartoon to capture the attention and interest of the class. Educators and teachers can use cartoons by ToonDoo within a lesson to demonstrate a point of interest within the lesson while making the point flow more naturally. My own experience with toondoo was difficult at first. It was the first assignment that my teacher in my technology class assigned and I was nervous, but once I got started it turned out to be really easy and fun! I reminded me of something that I would have in mind to do with elementary or middle school kids. I do not think that high school kids would enjoy using toondoo as much as the younger children. ToonDoo can give students the opportunity to express themselves and their favorite activities or characters in new ways that are unknown to the rest of the classroom, and the idea or actually printing those out and displaying them is such a great idea! Displaying your students work can be so beneficial to their confidence and the accuracy that they put into their work will be better after knowing that it will be displayed for anyone and everyone to see!
8. Poll Everywhere
When using poll everywhere you can ask a question and allow people to respond using multiple choice or free write answers. Each person has total control of their own poll. Once they decide to start the poll it will start, and once they decide to end the poll it will end. While many schools and classrooms are fortunate enough to have the funds to purchase sets of classroom clickers, poll everywhere offers educators an viable alternative to traditional classroom response systems, by taking advantage of the cell phones that students are already brining into our classrooms. One big concern is schools cell phone policy. Each teacher will have to come up with their own cell phone policy and make the students obey the rules. If students do not have a cell phone or texting plan than place them into groups. Place students into pairs or small groups that require a debate or consensus before the vote can be placed. Be in charge of your poll! When creating a new poll, there is an option in the top right hand corner that allows the poll creator to decide how many times a single device can place a vote. For quick and easy learning and progress, try to create multiple questions with specific answers, try creating a few polls with generic responses
- A,B,C,D
-Yes, No
-True, False
This strategy will allow you to quickly poll a class based on an existing quiz, test or homework assignment. Also, by using this strategy, you can simply keep one poll projected and clear the results for the next question. This eliminates the need to go back into your poll inbox to select the next poll.
I think that poll everywhere is a great classroom tool. This can be a great way to give quizzes or test, and it is so much quicker that doing a regular written test, and can give students the opportunity to find their grade out right away. This web tool would be great for me as a physical educator to use because I ask great questions about muscles, and games, and workouts, and bones that we learn in my class. One use I really like is having students give responses to questions or ask their own questions about reading assignments or the like OUTSIDE of class. Every teacher has been there when you’ve given an assignment and on the following day ask, “Do you have any questions?” and you only get blank stares or one word responses. This way students respond while they are reading, it has helped to get more thoughtful responses and more meaningful questions.
Again if your using poll everywhere in your classroom the only downfall is allowing your students to use their cell phones. Make sure that all students stay focused and follow the rules of the poll. This web tool is probably more beneficial for middle school and high school students, who have cell phones, or ipods, or ipads, and know how to work them.
9. Podomatic
Podomatic is a great tool for any teacher to use with their students, or have their students use for projects or homework. Podomatic is a tool where you can create an audio segment talking about whatever you want, hopefully educational, and it can be as long as you want I believe. So teachers can use this site to talk about a specific subject like math or about a caterpillar and have their students listen to it at home and take notes, or fill out a worksheet along with the audio segment. It is a great tool to use with your students out of class, and you can even make announcements for your students to check up daily or even give some information as to what class will be like tomorrow so they can prepare. Teachers can also have the students create a Podomatic and have them reenact a radio show, a news announcement or beginning announcements of school. They can have the students try to teach about something particular in a Podomatic as well. They can listen to it over and over again to help them study or show their friends what they have done. You can publish it on the website and have other people listen to your audio segment or even have them use it for their classroom or to help their kids learn. It is a fabulous resource for an educational value. The overall impression of this website is very professional and is very easy to use. You have to create your own account, but it has a memory base to how much you can keep in there. It will keep your past audio segments there for you ready to use or share at any time. The website is very easy to manage, and you can create one in no time, but I do suggest that you plan what you say out by righting it down and going over it a few times. Stumbling your words doesn’t always sound so good, you want to make it sound professional and smooth. I suggest the grade level for this tool to be around third grade and above. I say this because between kindergarten and second grade they still have trouble over the concept of what it is all about, and with third graders they can work with media pretty well. Also third graders can get their parents to get on the website for them to check up on class, and any grade older can do the same all the way through college. Any tips or pointers for this site from me is to plan ahead for sure, and maybe have some practice runs or do it a couple of times and see which one sounds the best. You can always delete the mess ups or mistakes and only have the good one be seen. This is a great site for once again anyone to use about.
10. Prezi
http://prezi.com/bklnjiesmt4z/the-military-selective-service-act/?auth_key=ae0ebb24ff90d2585d8c0c53cff9b16ed669909f
Prezi is a tool I learned about my freshman year in my Intro to College Writing class, and I honestly thought it was so cool. I like to describe it as Power point with all the bells and whistles. It doesn’t just go from a slide to a slide to slide. It moves around, it zooms in and out, it goes sideways, and it just intrigues the viewer, because you don’t know what is going to happen next. While all that is happening you are learning the information written down, or the pictures being shown. The overall impression of the site is that it is pretty cool, it is not as professional and boring as what a business meeting may have but it has all the Pazazz that will keep kids interested. Unfortunately the ease of use is actually a little hard at first. It took me a while to figure out how to do everything. I still do not know how to do everything, but I can make it look really good still and exciting. You may have to go through the tutorial to learn everything, and may have to give a tutorial to your students of younger ages so they don’t get confused and frustrated with it. I would say this site is great for teachers to make for their students to use to teach and learn, but I think it is a great way to have the students get involved and have a project and make one. When I was younger I thought making a power point project was the coolest thing ever. I believe third grade and up is a great grade recommendation for this. Obviously the younger they are the more help they will need, and the older they are the more independent they will be with it and will be able to explore a majority of it on their own and give them the opportunity to be creative with it. Any tips or pointers I have of this site is to not get frustrated and give up so easily with it. It can be a little tough to understand and work but once you get it down it is so cool what you can do with it. Probably should practice a bunch and just make random prezi slides with no meaning to get the handle of what you can do with it so when you need to do a project you know how to do everything and will not get so frustrated with it. I love Prezi so much more than power point and is a good alternate to the slide rocket when you want to make it more fun.